My First Blog

It's 6.22am on Christmas Eve morning December 24th and I awoke with the same excitement I used to wake with as a little girl when I knew Santa had been. However I am no longer 4, I'm 47 and as my husband nestled into my back to snuggle more just a few minutes ago, I knew I would not be able to connect with him until I took care of some business that was pre-occupying my heart.

You see I am pregnant with my third book, and like a mother who no longer can ignore her body is changing and finally admits she is pregnant again, she then has to acknowledge as I do this morning, what is ahead. She has nine months of gestation, physical inconvenience and daily mixed emotions ahead. For a writer it is not much different except it is on a heart level as our heart swells and changes shape and it brings emotional inconvenience because it never leaves you and daily mixed emotions are ever present. My gestation period for this book child is not nine, but ten months. I look forward to it with mostly great love and excitement and also with an element of dread as I know my life, as with the life of any mother; once this new book is born it will never be the same again.

The responsibility to love, parent, take ownership, care for it even when others don’t is a lifetime commitment.

I finally had the courage on December 22nd, 2009 just last week, to prematurely conclude a full time contract that was due to run until May 2010, I currently hold as Ambassador for a large federally funded, clinical counselling service.  I requested that I lessen my hours so that I can give my full attention to this new heart child I am carrying.

I have been in emotional, physical and spiritual recovery for fourteen years putting my last drink, drug and the first huge chunk of childhood denial down on October 12, 1995. In the following decade I completed and had published my first two manuscripts. In the first five years I gave birth to my first literary child which I named A Helping Hand with Life and the publishing midwifes were then called Hodder Stoughton but are now Hachette Australia. Its younger sibling arrived in the following years which is often nicknamed EF for Emotional Fitness and in the birthing room as midhusband was the supportive and respectful Rex Finch of Finch Publishing. When people ask me about my first two children at book signings I speak openly and lovingly about their trials and tribulations, however when asked when I am writing my next one, I have until now been quite non committal only acknowledging that I am pregnant but have never committed to my due date.

So my dearest reader, this morning ... today ... let the record show that I can no longer deny it is time to get down to business. My next literary baby is due October 12, 2010 and I look forward to sharing the journey with you and if you choose to go the full ten months with me I will be most grateful for your support as with any birth, it is an exciting, sacred and vulnerable time and my heart has started to pound just a little harder and move me from the inside as a child does in a mothers swollen belly as I sit here in my nighty with Santa like excitement at the thought of holding it for the first time.

I am heading back to bed to snuggle with Mr. Delicious, I hope to talk to you again tomorrow, until then I would like to leave you with the Word Vitamins I will be taking this morning, so that if you choose to you can feed your heart today with these words in case it feels malnourished at any time.  Word Vitamins have revived my tired heart over the past 14 years and made it strong and robust so I thoroughly recommend this type of daily intake if your heart is feeling tired, as I would not go a day without them myself ...

'Everyone has talent, what is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.' Erica Jong